Pitchfork choose Prequel Tapes' Groove podcast for their 9 best mixes of September

02 October 2017

Go slow: Take a cue from Peggy Gou and Sofay, whose mixes start out at a drowsy, downtempo pace. Or go fast: Portugal’s Violet and Berlin’s Gunther both attain techno’s high-flying cruising speed, with varying levels of intensity. And if you’d prefer to skirt the dancefloor entirely, there are plenty of options for that, too, be it Prequel Tapes’ tour of his industrial adolescence or Kaitlyn Aurealia Smith’s array of synths and Sade. One selection this month isn’t a DJ mix at all: That’s Actress’ session with the London Contemporary Orchestra, which translates the no-fi electronic musician’s digital abstractions for the concert hall.

Prequel Tapes – Groove Podcast 122

Berlin’s Prequel Tapes project got its start with a trawl through its unidentified creator’s teenaged tape archives. Dusting off home-recorded DATs from his industrial adolescence, he channeled those inspirations into throbbing electronic abstractions, with no discernable timestamp whatsoever. He does something similar on his mix for Germany’s Groove Magazine, rearranging a lifetime’s worth of favorites—Nurse With Wound, Pan Sonic, Clock DVA, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds—mega-mix style in Ableton and topping it off with improvised drum-machine accompaniment from his TR-707. It’s a dense, perpetually shifting listen in which ambient soundscapes drift into slow-motion acid, and distorted drum crunch fades to the pulsing woodwinds of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. With up to four tracks layered at any given point, it guarantees that you’ve never heard the source material quite like this before.